The Federal Communications Commission has announced new rules to open up 1300 megahertz of spectrum in the 17 gigahertz band for use by fixed-satellite systems operating in non-geostationary orbit.
FCC said Thursday the newly adopted rules will enable satellite operators to broaden their ability to deploy high-speed internet access and other advanced services.
According to the commission, the new policy seeks to align the U.S. Table of Frequency Allocations with international allocations to offer a more cohesive framework worldwide for fixed-satellite services in the 17 GHz band.
“Our rules allow a range of use cases from different orbits, bolstering competition in the space economy and creating more opportunities for companies from the United States around the world,” FCC Chair Jessica Rosenworcel said in a statement published Thursday.
Tele-EC is a component of VA Health Connect, a phone service that veterans can contact when they need to speak to a clinical triage nurse regarding a medical situation they are experiencing, the Department of Veterans Affairs said Thursday.
When clinically appropriate, the triage nurse will connect a caller to a Tele-EC provider, who will then evaluate the caller and recommend next steps, including treatment or in-person care if necessary.
“Sometimes, you’re not sure whether what you’re experiencing is a minor emergency or not — and tele-emergency care can help you resolve those questions,” VA Undersecretary for Health Dr. Shereef Elnahal said regarding the service, which underwent a pilot program in recent months.
“Veterans can get immediate, virtual triage with a VA medical provider who has direct access to their medical records. This avoids having to potentially drive to the nearest emergency department and wait to be evaluated, if appropriate,” Elnahal explained.
Tele-EC is also accessible via the VA Health Chat app.
Sens. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., and Mark Warner, D-Va., have introduced a bill that would direct the Department of Health and Human Services to establish and implement mandatory minimum cybersecurity standards for healthcare providers, clearinghouses, health plans and business associates, including those for key entities that are important to national security.
The Senate Finance Committee said Thursday the proposed Health Infrastructure Security and Accountability Act would provide upfront investment payments worth $800 million for rural and urban safety net hospitals and $500 million to all hospitals to implement improved cybersecurity standards.
The legislation would require HHS to audit the data security practices of at least 20 regulated entities each year and support the department’s security oversight and enforcement activities through a user fee on all regulated institutions.
Under the proposed measure, business associates and covered entities would be required to perform independent cybersecurity audits each year and stress tests to determine their capability to quickly restore service following a cyber incident.
The bill would also remove the statutory caps on the department’s fining authority, require top executives to annually certify compliance with requirements to strengthen corporate accountability and codify the HHS secretary’s authority to provide accelerated and advanced Medicare payments in the event of a healthcare system disruption caused by a cyberattack.
“With hacks already targeting institutions across the country, it’s time to go beyond voluntary standards and ensure health care providers and vendors get serious about cybersecurity and patient safety. I’m glad to introduce legislation that would mandate sensible cybersecurity protocols while also getting resources to rural and underserved hospitals to ensure they have the funding to meet these new standards,” Warner said.
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The SDA said Thursday the contracts and agreements are funded under the Systems, Technologies, and Emerging Capabilities broad agency announcement.
The selected companies will conduct 90-day feasibility studies focused on engineering, analyses and technical trades to support space vehicle de-orbit services for the PWSA. The studies are ongoing and are expected to be done by December, with the final report to be delivered by the end of 2024.
The companies selected by the SDA include:
Arkisys
Impulse Space
Quantum Space
Sierra Space
SpaceWorks Enterprises
Starfish Space
The SDA is exploring potential commercial alternatives for assisted disposal services, despite having current disposal plans capable of handling hundreds of space vehicles to be deployed in low-Earth orbit starting with Tranche 1.
The National Security Agency and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency have collaborated with counterparts in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom in developing a cybersecurity technical report and guidance to mitigate the Microsoft Active Directory platform’s vulnerabilities to cyber-attacks.
The 80-page report lists and describes the 17 techniques malicious actors commonly use to target AD, as well as recommends mitigation strategies against the cyber threats.
One of the cyberattack tactics that the report identified involves password spraying, which seeks authentication through a single or multiple passwords deployed on AD targets. As one security control to help deter password spraying, the guidance suggests long passwords with a minimum of 30 characters for local administrator and service accounts.
Microsoft launched AD in 1999 and became the most popular authentication and authorization platform in enterprise information technology networks worldwide.
Dave Luber, NSA cybersecurity director, noted that many networks of the Department of Defense and the defense industrial base rely on AD and are attractive cyberattack targets.
“Taking steps to properly defend AD from these common and advanced techniques will detect and prevent adversary activities and protect sensitive data from determined malicious cyber actors,” he said.
The NSA recently published a cybersecurity advisory, in coordination with the FBI, the U.S. Cyber Command’s Cyber National Mission Force and international allies, to alert on China-linked threat actors who hacked into internet-connected devices to create a botnet and execute malicious online activity.
According to the RFI released on SAM.gov Wednesday, the HPC has to be ruggedized or designed to endure harsh conditions. The system, which will be installed in the centerline avionics bay under the midsection of the fuselage, should also be ready to use and can be deployed with minimal logistics, training and support.
The PMA-266 also requires a cross-domain-solution and a high assurance internet protocol encryptor in conjunction with the HPC that may be placed inside or outside the system’s enclosure.
The HPC has to meet the requirements to secure an authorization to operate at the Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmented Information level.
Interested parties have until Nov. 24 to submit their responses to the RFI.
The Department of Defense has started acccepting insights on a proposed rule that seeks to make good on a Government Accountability Office recommendation regarding DOD-funded fundamental research.
According to a Federal Register notice published Thursday, GAO recommended that the Pentagon initiate steps to increase public access to results and data of federally-funded research.
The proposed rule, which was introduced as an amendment to the Defense Federal Acquisition Regulation Supplement, would require contractors to submit final peer-reviewed manuscripts to the Defense Technical Information Center’s publicly accessible repository.
The policy would also direct vendors that secured research and development contracts to implement and maintain a data management plan throughout the contract’s duration.
Vice President Kamala Harris is embarking on her first trip to the southwest border as the Democratic nominee for president Friday evening, where she is expected to reiterate her call for the addition of thousands of new federal officers and agents to the region.
Her proposal, however, is likely to butt up against a reality that has plagued each of the last three administrations: it is exceedingly difficult to hire those personnel.
Harris is expected to criticize former President Trump for his role in spiking a bipartisan agreement earlier this year, a significant portion of which focused on adding staff to key border agencies. The legislation would have supported more than 4,300 asylum officers at U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, 1,500 new Customs and Border Protection personnel—including both Border Patrol agents and customs officers—1,200 Immigration and Customs Enforcement employees, 100 immigration judges and support staff and additional USCIS staff.
Ahead of her speech Friday, the Harris campaign released an ad that promised the vice president has a plan to “hire thousands more border agents.” The campaign did not respond to requests for clarification, but the pledge appeared to go far beyond the Border Patrol hiring included in the failed bipartisan bill.
Source: Kamala Harris YouTube page
Just this week, however, the Government Accountability Office released a report that found Customs and Border Protection—including its Office of Field Operations, Border Patrol and Air and Marine Operations—has mostly failed to boost its workforce in recent years despite funding and presidential promises to do so. CBP has found some success in hiring personnel more quickly and bringing on more employees each year, but it has failed to keep pace with attrition in key areas.
“Over the last 10 years, CBP has frequently fallen short of its staffing targets for law enforcement positions, challenging the frontline workforce’s ability to fulfill the agency’s mission,” GAO said.
Border Patrol failed to reach its hiring goals from fiscal 2021 through fiscal 2024 and its total onboard staff has decreased in each of those years. The number of authorized agents jumped from 19,000 to 22,000 in that period, but the actual number of agents employed has declined. The reduction came despite Border Patrol managing to double its average annual hires in recent years. President Biden has boasted the he secured funding for small increases in Border Patrol staffing during his presidency, though his requests for supplemental funds for more dramatic hiring surges have gone unfulfilled.
The number of customs officers climbed significantly from fiscal 2018 through fiscal 2020, but has leveled off since then and dropped off so far in the current fiscal year.
That followed CBP missing its agency-wide hiring goals from fiscal years 2013 through 2017. Trump shortly after taking office vowed to ramp up the border security workforce and his administration signed a contract worth up to $300 million to help it bring on 7,500 border personnel, but canceled it after it managed to hire just 15 employees. Lawmakers for years were forced to claw back money appropriated for CBP hiring after the agency failed to meet its targets.
CBP has taken many steps to improve its hiring processes, incentivize potential hires to apply and motivate current employees to stay, GAO said, though the efforts have led to mixed results. The agency saw applications for law enforcement positions decline from fiscal years 2018 to 2022, though it ticked up in fiscal 2023. It has invested in advertising—spending $43 million on ads for job openings in fiscal 2023—thousands of recruiting events per year and hiring and retention incentives. Border Patrol, for example, is offering $20,000 recruiting incentives, which can go up to $30,000 in certain locations.
Officials said negative opinions of law enforcement in general and CBP in particular, increased demands on the workforce, worse work-life balance, reduced physical fitness among the general population and the remote locations and extreme weather conditions in many areas their employees work all have contributed to the recruiting issues.
Joining CBP is an arduous, time-intensive process with 12 steps that include a medical, physical and polygraph examination. After hovering around just 25% for many years, CBP has managed to increase the applicant pass rate for the polygraph test to 40%. That success is in part due to the agency no longer deeming marijuana use within the prior two years disqualifying. It has reduced that window to 90 days and an admission of use no longer leads to an automatic rejection.
CBP has struggled with poor morale since 2005, GAO noted, and the situation has hardly improved despite a significant investment of resources. The agency was ranked 432 out of 459 federal subcomponents in the most recent Best Places to Work rankings, which the Partnership for Public Service maintains based on Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data. Attrition has accelerated over the last decade, with CBP officials pointing to competition with other law enforcement agencies, a lack of services in its remote locations and a poor work-life balance. It has offered retention and relocation bonuses on a limited basis and, in some cases, implemented special salary rates.
The bipartisan border bill, which came together after months of negotiations between the White House and senators on both sides of the aisle and which Harris is promising to bring over the finish line if elected president, included some additional provisions to ease hiring. USCIS and ICE would receive direct hire authority—allowing the agencies to bypass normal restrictions that slow down federal onboarding—while the former agency would have been able to boost pay for some workers. CBP would have allowed more applicants to bypass the polygraph exam, provided they previously passed one.
Trump has also vowed to ask more of the federal immigration workforce, including his promise to institute mass deportation of millions of undocumented U.S. residents, though he has not specified how significant of a hiring surge he would require.
Either candidate, should they push for more CBP personnel, would likely face additional headwinds. The agency told GAO it is preparing for a retirement wave in the coming years as a significant swath of its workforce becomes retirement eligible at once. It anticipates a particularly acute problem at Border Patrol, after its surge of 2007 hires becomes retirement eligible in 2027. CBP is already planning to mitigate the issue, including by establishing contingencies if it is unable to restock its rolls in a timely manner.
The defense chiefs of the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom have announced the winning companies of the first AUKUSElectronic Warfare Challenge.
Launched in March, the competition aimed to identify electromagnetic spectrum solutions to give AUKUS nations a strategic advantage in targeting and defending against adversarial EW capabilities, the Defense Innovation Unit said Thursday.
The DIU, Australia’s Advanced Strategic Capabilities Accelerator and the U.K.’s Defence and Security Accelerator held the challenge to advance AUKUS Pillar II, which seeks to develop new EW technologies to bolster global security.
Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, Australian Minister for Defence Richard Marles and UK Secretary of State for Defence John Healey revealed the competition during their recent meeting in London.
Austin, a three-time Wash100 Award recipient, identified the U.S. winner as Distributed Spectrum, which received $150,000 for its radio frequency sensing platform, which provides real-time intelligence on adversary activity.
According to Distributed Spectrum CEO Alex Wulff, the contest inspired the development and deployment of an attritable sensing capability to monitor the Indo-Pacific region.
The tech competition attracted 173 companies from across the United States, Australia and the United Kingdom, highlighting the AUKUS countries’ strong defense innovation bases.
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State and tribal governments will receive more than $1.5 billion in federal funds to combat the opioid crisis, the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration announced Thursday.
The announcement comes as nationwide overdose rates dipped for the first time since 2020, dropping 10% from April 2023 to April 2024, according to federal data. It’s a welcome sign of progress to federal, state and local governments.
“This [data] tells us that we must remain focused on addressing the overdose epidemic and saving lives, and we must continue to build a village that supports individuals struggling with substance use disorder and their families,” said Miriam Delphin-Rittmon, SAMHSA administrator and assistant secretary for mental health and substance use at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, on a call with reporters Thursday.
While the reasons for the decline of drug-related deaths is hard to pinpoint, public health experts have pointed to governments’ efforts to increase the availability of medications to treat substance use disorders and overdoses, public health initiatives like treatment programs and increased outreach, and awareness efforts to educate the public on the dangers of drugs like opioids.
Most of the new federal funds—$1.49 billion—will support states’ mitigation efforts like increasing residents’ access to medications for opioid use disorder through, for example, mobile clinics or telehealth services. The remaining funds are allocated for tribal governments and technical assistance for grant recipients to carry out their opioid response programs.
Many of the awardees focus on teens and young adults. The New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services, for instance, will use $29 million in federal funds for substance use preventative messaging and education initiatives targeting teens and young adults, building its opioid response workforce development efforts and offering those seeking treatment services like childcare and transportation, according to the SAMHSA grant dashboard. The department aims to service more than 6,300 people through September 2029.
States can also use funds to expand or improve their addiction prevention, treatment and recovery strategies, such as installing public health vending machines or distributing naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal medicine.
Having naloxone available in public settings like schools or government housing facilities is a significant part of addressing the opioid crisis, Delphin-Rittmon said, to ensure people who use opioids or who are around others using the substance have quick access to the life-saving medicine. She pointed to Michigan’s syringe service program, which distributed nearly 69,000 naloxone units and fentanyl test strips in fiscal year 2022 with the help of state opioid program grants. As a result, Delphin-Rittmon said the state saw at least 2,241 overdose reversals statewide.
Under the grant program, tribal programs will receive $63 million to mitigate opioid overdoses and substance use disorders. The funds will also help increase tribes’ access to medications for opioid use disorders and support addiction prevention and treatment.
Tribal communities have higher rates of overdose deaths than any other racial or ethnic group in the U.S. In 2022, non-Hispanic American Indian and Alaskan Native people died from overdoses at more than five times the rate of other Americans.
In Tulare County, California, the Tule River Indian Health Center is planning to use $250 million in federal funds over the next five years to hire a Tule River tribal member with lived experience with opioid use disorders to work as a peer recovery specialist in the community. The specialist, according to the SAMHSA grant announcement, will serve as a mentor to support individuals through their treatment and recovery journeys.
The health center will also use the grant funds to hire a substance abuse counselor who will assess clients’ eligibility for substance use disorder medications, develop treatment plans and provide counseling services.
An additional $18.5 million will support training and technical assistance services. For the next three years, the Opioid Response Network will help grant awardees improve community outreach efforts, address stigma among opioid response workers and explore evidence-based strategies to reduce opioid use and overdoses, among other efforts.
The funds will be distributed through SAMHSA’s tribal opioid response program and state opioid response programs, which launched in 2018. Between September 2021 and September 2022, the grants helped more than 177,000 people receive treatment for an opioid use disorder and another 480,000 people receive recovery support services, according to a SAMHSA statement.
Previous grantees reported “less depression, less anxiety, fewer suicide attempts and increased abstinence from alcohol and drug use” among individuals served by state and tribal opioid response programs, Andrea Palm, deputy secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, said Thursday. The grant-funded programs have helped people with substance use disorders obtain stable housing, build social connections and seek educational opportunities.
“We are so appreciative of the work being done around the country using [tribal and state opioid response] funds,” Delphin-Rittmon said. “Losing one life is too many.”
